


Something Near Relief

by jin_bestgirl



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Last Kiss, M/M, Sad, Shiganshina District (Shingeki no Kyojin), Touching, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:41:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26142760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jin_bestgirl/pseuds/jin_bestgirl
Summary: “‘This had better not be a confession of love,’ Levi remarks dryly, and it’s a private joke for himself to enjoy, a new way to suffer because it feels like he deserves to. He breathes in deep and waits for Erwin’s light gaze, for his typical scoff, for the real information. But Erwin is staring, staring hard.”(aka, a headcanon I had to write after watching the Shiganshina arc)Levi and Erwin’s first/last kiss.**spoilers ahead for Attack on Titan through season 3**
Relationships: Levi/Erwin Smith
Comments: 58
Kudos: 434





	Something Near Relief

“I’m making the choice. Give up on your dream and die. Lead the recruits straight into hell. I will take down the Beast Titan.” 

The words are steel-hard and ice cold and Levi press-gangs them through his lips, hearing them from afar as if they had been born to a stranger’s mind. It is with a soldier’s easy indifference that he detaches himself from the moment; if he doesn’t the words won’t make it through, the necessary condemnation won’t be strong enough to escape through the iron gate of his jaw and the way his entire body retches against what he has to say. So he lets his consciousness waver for a moment, just enough to let the words make their escape. They slip smoothly through his lips and into the unretrievable space between himself and Erwin. In the distance somebody screams as they die. 

At first Erwin is genuinely startled; Levi can read him without effort, and it’s precarious for a breathless stretch of time, the air taut with the slow drag of computation, Erwin taking it all in, Levi watching it all sink into the commander’s mind like ink bleeding across a sheet of paper. 

This is the least- the _least_ Levi can do for Erwin- and still his selfishness persists. A childish impulse to call it back because _it isn’t too late, it isn’t too late yet_ flares in him; immediate contrition. The fledgling protest thrashes and twists in the place he’s pinned it down to keep it from escaping through his mouth like the other words, and when he swallows thinly his throat is dry. He thinks with a grim kind of humor that it might serve as a backup defense should he find himself unable to hold his tongue. 

But he’ll hold his tongue. 

Erwin processes the condemnation for a long moment, the moment stretching longer, longer still. And then Levi watches Erwin arrive at something divine. 

The stunned expression melts with the most delicate sensitivity, Erwin’s thick eyebrows twitching back down as if finally released from whatever uncertain strings had been keeping them taut. The skin around his electric eyes softens and his mouth relaxes into something near sangfroid, but less duty and more peace. The subtleties of Erwin’s emotion drift across his face like the way good weather changes the look of the ground beneath it, shadows of clouds gliding across the landscape and painting new shapes there. Before Levi’s eyes, Erwin gives up. 

_You did it_ , Levi thinks with a sense of callous duty, but it is useless against this new feeling, this sickening sinking feeling. 

Erwin smiles, just the slightest thing. He still looks tired but also suddenly, remarkably at ease, and it is this expression that sparks to life in Levi a sudden countering, a pull back against the tide that has welled up around them and begun to drag, to drag Erwin out to high tide. Levi had slid the knife so carefully into Erwin’s back that he had thanked him for it, had laid down and waited for this water to pull him out. Now that he’s drifting Levi can’t bring himself to watch it like it’s not his responsibility. It’s ridiculous; Levi had made the call, but he finds himself unable to let it proceed now without contest, at the moment of truth. They can’t both go so easy. 

And then the moment passes, Levi clenching his jaw tight to keep the selfish words from spilling out, and something about the silence serves as officialization, like the gavel falling to proclaim with lawful integrity the death sentence of Erwin Smith. It had been Levi’s hand wrapped too firmly around the handle. 

Something in the air lifts and it feels like permission to stand, but Levi doesn’t move. He’s tethered to the spot by not what has just transpired but what will happen if he goes- if he gives such consent to the universe, to allow it to continue to expand and for time to continue to pass. If he moves, he authorizes the tide to carry Erwin out, and Erwin won’t fight to keep his head out of it.

Above him Erwin sighs and Levi holds his breath against the sudden pull of an alien emotion. 

He’s pathetic. 

_Follow through, you piece of shit,_ Levi thinks hard. _Get a grip._

They’ve rampaged off into battle before a million times and they might have died any one of them, and it is with this thought in mind that Levi edges out ahead of himself now, knowing already where his mind is drifting to, cutting it off at the pass- the desperate, sorry excuse that is trying to bore its way into his rationale. 

_You haven’t told him._

It’s nothing, a boy’s fantasy, and he casts it from his mind with cool dismissal, reeling against the deeper feeling it brings with it- the panicked desperation- and deeper still, the knowledge that this is the last moment for it, maybe the last moment for anything at all. But it’s a non-starter, and after a moment it passes again from Levi like the ghost of acceptance had passed across Erwin’s face, and the weakness is gone again as quickly as it had come. 

Levi sighs now like Erwin had sighed, and lowers his gaze from Erwin’s pensive one to the right side of his gear where a spatter of someone’s blood has painted the metal the color of their insides. He rubs at it with his sleeve, a smooth, single swipe, and catches a distorted version of himself reflected back at him behind the blood. Levi jerks his head to flick the hair from his face, peering down into his own impassive eyes. He feels hollow, but it’s better than feeling and he leaves it the hell alone. 

Levi is not particularly pressed to move just yet. The sensation in his legs has ebbed from an aching to a numbness, relieving him of any physical urgency once compelling him to stand. The truth of it, though, the bare and honest truth, lies in the pathetic and simple fact that he does not want to put any extra space between himself and Erwin. He acknowledges it now; he allows himself this small indulgence. What’s done is done but there’s some time left, if only the barest amount, and there’s no point spending it apart. 

Suddenly feels the weight of eyes on him, and Levi knows with inexplicable certainty that his commander is watching him. Without checking to affirm, Levi speaks up as he blinks at his little reflection, his voice drawling along with a casual ease that is so transparently false. 

“See something you like?” 

Levi raises his head to find his hypothesis confirmed; Erwin’s passive blue gaze is steady meeting Levi’s hard dark one, seemingly unruffled in being caught. In a sadistic sort of backfire, Levi suddenly finds himself with a lump in his throat at Erwin’s cool and unwavered attention. He dismisses the urge to swallow; Erwin will see it and he refuses to be so obvious, to have maintained solidity for five years only to throw it away now at the end of the road, in a fit of juvenile passion. 

“Levi,” Erwin says with such a gentle coloring that Levi does swallow then, swallows and then cocks a thin eyebrow to make up for it.

Levi is halfway through a vague speculation as to whether or not Erwin has read anything into it all when his mind comes to a halt- when it becomes suddenly apparent that Erwin is somewhere else, too. 

The commander’s eyebrows are drawn like he’s calculating something mathematical, and though his lips are still parted in the afterglow of Levi’s name, they don’t seem particularly poised to continue. Something is processing in his blonde head, something perhaps just as big as the previous understanding he had come to. Levi considers prompting him for a moment, but at the point of vocalization elects instead to hold his tongue. Erwin will talk if there is something to be said. 

“I need to… tell you something,” the commander finally ventures, but he says it like he’s still considering the words as they come out of his mouth, like he’s not quite sure if he really needs to tell Levi anything at all. Bombs fire in the distance and more screams rip through the air. Levi grimaces. 

“This had better not be a confession of love,” he remarks dryly, and it’s a private joke for himself to enjoy, a new way to suffer because it feels like he deserves to. He breathes in deep and waits for Erwin’s light gaze, for his typical scoff, for the real information. 

But Erwin is staring, staring hard. 

Levi goes rigid, staring back. He waits for the give, for the bitter smile or the break, but it doesn’t come. Instead Erwin’s ever-steady gaze flickers from Levi, like he’s trying to hide the path through his eyes to the secret he’s biting down on, and suddenly Levi understands. 

Erwin knows. 

Blood roars up in Levi’s ears in an instant, like a distant scream, reaching a fever pitch in seconds. Once he had been struck from his horse with the leaden blow of a titan’s sweeping hand; he’s back there again now, numbness sinking into his chest as he falls, falls through himself. Levi’s constitution is iron but it isn’t unbendable. He can take more than thirty men can take but he can’t take this, and his chest constricts at the joke, the cruel joke of the moment, and his expression hardens, walls up. Levi will not let himself be humiliated like this. 

“Erwin,” he says, and the name is all he needs because it’s thick with danger, electric with warning. _Don’t_ , he thinks privately; in fact he pleads. 

“Levi,” Erwin echoes back with an air helpless, his eyebrows upturned like he’s apologizing for something. Levi realizes then, with a weight like a stone in his mouth and stomach, that Erwin means to continue- that they are about to play out the ridiculous fantasy of a star-crossed romance, and his brows knit hard because he doesn’t understand, his quick mind can’t process this quickly enough-

“Levi. Listen to me…” 

And Levi stands, pushing himself off his knees and out of the dirt, and he won’t stay for this, he won’t stay for this coward’s admission from beyond the point of no return, this call back over the shoulder with one foot already in hell. He won’t watch the time they’ve spent be corrupted before his eyes into something wasted; if the words remain unsaid nothing will be lost but Erwin’s life. If Levi leaves now nothing will be missed but Erwin’s command, and memories will fade untouched and left alone by the cruel hand that reaches for them here, bound by evil duty to twist them open and break them apart until Levi can see them all for what they really are and what they always have been: missed opportunities. If Levi leaves now their time together will evaporate as he grows older and the memories will die with him without ever being exposed for the truth of what he now knows and cannot unknow they are. 

The night years ago when he had realized how horribly wrong he had gone, when he had paced manic through his room and failed to banish the sudden and divine understanding that he wanted Erwin in ways he would take to the grave, there had been no going back from that but maybe there had been a way forward, and if Erwin speaks now the confirmation will send Levi straight to hell before he can get the chance to kill himself for the tragedy of it.

“No,” he says in a colorless voice, and again and again, numbly. “No, no.”

“Levi-”

“Shut up.” 

Levi twists around to say it, one hand shooting out from under his cloak as if he’s keeping some rabid animal at bay, holding it there as a threat, a promise of hell to pay. His mind is a swirl of nonsense and he plucks through it in frantic frustration, unable to find a single substantial thing to latch onto, to fling out at Erwin’s feet, to use to explain the pain thrashing through him. 

He wants to undo, to reel backwards through time to the moment that ruined him and erase it. 

It had been two brutal weeks of post-mission recovery culminating in the realization that would ravage Levi’s waking hours and sleepless nights for the rest of his life, when something had shifted in a way irreversible, clicking into place after a slow slide of years against years- when Levi had blinked and awoken to find his injuries being touched and tended to by Erwin, and suddenly, suddenly every peripheral movement had set Levi’s skin on fire; his black sleep that night had been plagued with licentious images of Erwin, schoolboy dreams bringing him to awaken hard like a twelve year old boy discovering himself. 

“I need you to hear it,” Erwin says in a breath of a voice from where he sits, and Levi shakes his head without looking at him. 

“No,” Levi counters again with the same firmness, and this time he can’t stop the rip of emotion that carries his tone up higher than is usual. His mind is on fire and still he stands there aimlessly, one hand still out in the vague direction of his commander, whose voice matches Levi’s now in its loss of control. 

“Please, Levi-”

“I said shut up,” Levi groans quietly, still dangerous. “I don’t-… just stop talking.”

There’s a long pause, pregnant with sadistic potential. And then Erwin speaks, plain and without defense. 

“Then kiss me at least.” 

Levi is jarred out of his body. Breath catching harshly in his throat, struck still by the blatant honesty, Levi can’t speak. Slowly he turns to stare at Erwin- how dare he, _how dare he_ \- Erwin, who raises his hung head slowly to meet Levi’s menacing gaze. Where does he believe the right comes from, Levi wonders madly, because Erwin has no right, no right to play this game now, to offer so casually to Levi the dream he has fought to kill for years; no right to take hold of this situation because he’s decided it’s suddenly time, and to lead this charge with such carelessness- such disregard for what they have built together. How ready he is to knock it to the foundation. 

Levi feels sick. 

If he kisses Erwin it will be the kiss of death, Levi’s blessing for Erwin to die without trying not to. This is what Erwin is asking of him. Erwin will throw his life away because they will have shared this, this last thing he has to left after releasing his grip on the untouchable dream of the basement, and the pull of five years of yearning is nothing compared to the want for Erwin to be alive at the end of it all, to walk out of Shiganshina so they can talk about the disaster they have created here searching for something that resembles love. Words come hard and incautious out of Levi’s mouth. 

“I won’t give you permission to kill yourself; if you’re looking for that you’ll need to find it somewhere else,” he spits, leaning into the bitterness because it feels good to, knowing he’s a walking oxymoron but Erwin wasn’t supposed to say what he said, and all bets are off now. 

“You already gave it, Captain. Or don’t you remember?” 

Erwin is too gentle and it snaps something deep inside Levi, but not the barrier holding back the rage. It’s the overwhelming pain that floods through him now, from tip to toe, and all he can do is stand there and bear it. Levi hovers there, and he shakes his head pointlessly because it’s disappointing, isn’t it, it might be the most disappointing thing that’s happened in his entire long life. 

A moment later Levi finds himself somehow back in the same place, in the dirt at Erwin’s feet, kneeling there like he’s gone back in time and maybe he has, wouldn’t that be something, to replay this nightmare of a moment again and again to bide the time, to leave room for another option, any other option than this hell because as much shit as they’ve both seen Levi thinks this just might be the crown prince of it all. 

“I won’t touch you and I won’t listen to you say it,” he breathes in a strained voice, working hard to contort the spiraling emotion into something harsh instead of something desperate, something rough instead of despairing. When Erwin speaks in return it is low and soft. Easy. 

“I won’t say it so long as you tell me that you already know.”

Tender fingertips brush suddenly against the side of Levi’s head, and he jars at the contact, unsteadied at last here at the culmination of his career not by a titan but by the careful touch of his commanding officer. His body yearns to lean into it and he resists like it’s a trick of the enemy. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

He finds the cruel words and he relishes them as they leave his mouth, even as Erwin’s touch strengthens through his hair, skimming his skin now, because he can’t acknowledge this and he won’t say the other words, though they press at the base of his throat and beg for release, _I love you, I love you and you can never know, we will not say it just so it can be taken away._

“Levi.”

He looks up, stares at Erwin, who looks back openly. Erwin’s face is devoid of all but an aching need, a calm, imploring look. He speaks once more and his voice is tight like Levi’s would be should he try and talk again.

“Just tell me that you know. If you know.”

Suddenly, something burns hot and alive in Levi so sharply that it surpasses the speed of his conscious mind. No. He won’t say _I know_ back like some banal romance novel, nor will he grovel any longer at Erwin’s feet, toying around words and picking through phrases like flowers, arranging them carefully to let the subtlety through, wasting time, wasting more time to add to the lifetime they have already wasted away together. He won’t abide by the rules Erwin has set or cater to his heroic tragic fantasy and he won’t take his leave either, because he is the one who will have to live with what happens today, he is the one who will bear the transformation of the beautiful to the piteous, who will serve as sole vessel to harbor the moments the two of them once bore equal responsibility for. He will not bend to the will of the universe’s tragic play, and he will not walk away without taking something for himself, _for_ _himself_ for once in his fucking life, to remind him of this, the smallest push back against what they are helpless to change: a world so indifferent and cruel that it’s made them indifferent and cruel in turn- but maybe it hasn’t quite, maybe it hasn’t yet, because Levi still cares about something so much it makes him want to tear his bleeding heart out. 

Knees pushing into the dying grass, Levi reaches up to clutch either side of Erwin’s face and pulls him down, tilts up until he feels the press of full lips against his, until he can part his lips and have Erwin like this, and he doesn’t wait for Erwin to catch up. Levi kisses hungrily, desperate and open-mouthed, biting Erwin’s lip fiercely when he doesn’t reciprocate fast enough. Levi’s hands slide back around Erwin’s strong neck, drawing him deeper into himself, tugging at the hair there, and when the response finally comes, when Erwin begins to awaken to the moment and kiss back, sliding his arms around Levi and pressing him closer, Levi’s heart flares into his throat and he sees red. 

He kisses Erwin like he’s never kissed anyone, like he never will again. He holds fast onto his commander as the shallow fantasies of five years melt in moments like snow that has overstayed its welcome on spring ground, because nothing exists anymore but this, this clutch of hands and slide of tongues and heaving of chests. A quiet sound slips from Levi's throat and he doesn’t care. 

After a time Erwin’s hand slides up Levi’s body to find his face, his warmth touch against Levi’s sharp jaw still so unhurried compared to Levi’s slipshod recklessness. Single-handedly Erwin fans the fire of the kiss, calming and easing it until the desperation is cooled, until all that’s left is the two of them grasping onto each other, sharing deliberate kisses in near-stillness. Another volley of screams stains the distant air as they press into each other, slow now, as if the world isn’t burning around them and time is their ally after all. 

Against Levi’s hip in this novel, easy languidness presses the warm strain between Erwin’s legs, and with a sickening thrill Levi knows there isn’t enough time; they have run out of time for this. He makes a movement anyway, a pathetic, underhanded slide of the hand down Erwin’s neck, his chest, and he isn’t stopped. Levi touches Erwin through the coarse material of the pants and Erwin makes a soft, low sound against his lips. He keeps his hand there for a suspended heartbeat, breaking their kiss to stare down at it like it doesn’t belong to him. And then he’s snapping back out of it, dropping it away, regaining a steeling sense of composure. Waking up. 

He looks back up at Erwin, whose eyes are glinting with something near relief and who’s barely flushed, which is monumentally so for him, and Levi leans into the way his breath won’t stay in his lungs because it might be the last time he ever gets to feel it. They’ve come to the end and they both know where they are. 

“I had all this fucking time to be the best you’ve had,” Levi says after some time, and it’s a joke, half a joke, and though it comes out colored with despondently grim humor Erwin laughs anyway. The sound is a spark of color that fades from the space as quickly as it had bloomed into it. Nothing joyous can survive here. 

“This will have to do.”

Another volley of rocks fires down like bombs in the distance and they sit there listening to it, Erwin with his elbow on his knee, Levi sitting on the dirt between his legs, head leaned sideways against his thigh. The last of the shimmer around them fades back to dull earth tones, and the world is harsh again, and the inevitable looms before them, shaped like a man with a scythe.

**Author's Note:**

> This hurt me to write but it had to be done hahaha. Thanks so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed! Feel free to leave comments and kudos if you liked (or if you didn't).


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